Towards Accessible Virtual Learning Environments for Teaching Mathematics

1
Towards Accessible Virtual Learning
Environmentsfor Teaching Mathematics

• Enrico Pontelli
• Department of Computer Science
• New Mexico State University

2
Project Objectives

• Explore issues of learning and teaching
  mathematics for students with visual disabilities
• exploration of mathematics
• accessibility of virtual learning environments
• Build on existing state-of-the-art and new
  technology
• math accessibility
• semantic web
• rehabilitation robotics
• ...

3
Learning Mathematics

• Principles
• Learner as an Active Participant
• Task-oriented
• Multiple aspects of mathematics
• Analytical Aspects
• Perceptual and Exploratory views Mathematical
  Concepts

4
Access to Mathematical Content Analytical

• Significant research work on analytical
  accessibility of math
• presentation based on lexical indicators and/or
  prosody
• navigation of formulae
• Analytical investigation goes beyond formulae
• broader view of what mathematical content is
• use mathematical context to drive presentation,
  navigation, disambiguation of content
• Connect to existing formal math repositories

5
Perceptual and Exploratory Access to Mathematics

• Explore pictorial representations of mathematical
  concepts
• pre-existing in mathematical document
• dynamically generated from analytical content
• Multi-modal presentation
• Aural presentation
• textual components of diagrams
• knowledge representation techniques
• extraction of salient features
• summarization
• question-answer with deep reasonin
• Haptic presentation
• cheap commercial devices
• ad-hoc hardware

6
Making the Student an Active Participant

• Active Participation
• User-driven bookmarking
• Bookmarking note-taking
• Exercises
• mathematical note pad
• copy and compare formulae
• standard set of transformations
• interface to Mathematica

7
Accessible Learning Environment

• Cognitive studies
• how do students interact with a virtual learning
  environment (e.g., Moodle)?
• Term-paper writing
• Question-answering
• Knowledge acquisition
• Accessibility Technology
• use speech and aural cues to reproduce cognitive
  navigation processes
• Ontology-based navigation procedures
• Social bookmarking

8
Participants

• Computer Science
• E. Pontelli, S. Tran (NMSU)
• Psychology
• D. Gillan (NCSU)
• R. Bias (UTAustin)
• D. Simon, J. McDonald (NMSU)
• Mechanical Engineering
• O. Ma (NMSU)

9
Conclusions

• Project in its infancy
• pending funding...
• Enhance and extend state-of-the-art technology
• User-centered design